Working from Home is Not Just for Married Moms

Working from home might seem like a pipe dream if you are currently raising your children alone.  Do not be discouraged into thinking that work from home will only work for mothers who have a husband or partner.

There is no doubt that working from home is not easy when you are responsible for supporting and raising your children on your own.  But it is not impossible to develop a way to earn a good income from home so that you can have a more flexible schedule to meet the needs of your children.

Keep Working

You should not give up your current job if you are going to try to become a work from home mom.  It is necessary to start out slowly by trying to attract some clients or sales on a part-time basis.  If you are able to obtain clients and are able to keep up with minimal orders while still working, you know you have the opportunity to make a home based business work.

Start saving money while you are still working your job away from home.  This is easier said than done when you are a single parent.  But it is important to have an emergency fund if you are planning to run a business from home.  One way to save some money is to simply save all profits from your freelance work.

Planning and More Planning

Create a plan before you consider working full-time from home.  You will need to make a determination about what products and services you will offer.  It is important to decide exactly who your market audience will be for your business.   .

You should create a plan as to how you will market your home based business before you begin working full-time.  If you are earning an income by running your business on the side while you work, you have already found methods to promote your business.  Build on and add to these methods to create an advertising and promotional campaign that will work.

After creating a business and marketing plan, you must give though to how you will run your business from home.  Create a home office whether it is in a corner of a room or in a room by itself.  The important thing is to have some area dedicated to conducting business only.

Give some thought to the hours you will work.  Many moms with school age children opt to do the majority of work during the day while their children are at school.  If this does not provide you with enough time to finish tasks you might need to put in some time before your children wake up and/or after they go to bed.

Your schedule can be a little more challenging if you have children who are not yet in school.   One of the reasons you want to work from home is likely to be so that your children do not need to go to daycare.  Even if you work from home, it might be necessary to use childcare a few hours per week for some of the intense parts of your work.  You can send your child to preschool for just a couple hours per day.  You can consider asking a family member or trusted friend if they could babysit every once in a while when you have a particularly difficult project to complete.  You can also decide to work in small blocks of time throughout the day.  For example, you can work when your children are sleeping and at times when they are playing well.  If you work this way, good time management, organization and staying on task will be essential.

There certainly challenges to working at home if you are a single mom since there will not be another paycheck coming into the household and there will not be another parent to help with childcare.  However, careful planning before you run your home based business full-time can go a long way at bringing you success.